


Hoarding

by Cluegirl



Series: A Thing Of Rags and Patches [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Abduction, Abuse, Dark Fairy Tale, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gaslighting, Gen, Poetry, Seduction, Self-Rescuing Princess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-02 21:08:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16312757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cluegirl/pseuds/Cluegirl
Summary: Stories will later tell, I suppose, that the Dragon stole me away;Caught me from my horse at hunt,Plucked me from a royal parade,Or ravaged the land until I was surrendered up to him;A canapé in coronet; a royal nonpareil;A pretty, sticky toffee in satin slippers to bait the quest for a better class of JackThan will come to slay a marauder of livestock alone.





	1. Chapter 1

You must not pity me.  
Truly.  
Truly. 

I am not one of those golden haired, spindle-pricked girls, you know.  
I am wise to the dangers of cursed woods, fairy wells and enchanted gardens,  
Stepmothers, pastry architecture, and gifts from odd-eyed old women.  
Nor have I failed to heed advice from talking beasts or furniture.  
My mother is my own blood kin,  
My father lives, and loves me,  
And I got on with my sisters as well as ever sisters do.

So let us have no sympathy for the middle child of the Woodcutter King,  
Brown-haired daughter of that lucky Jack who plucked kingdom and bride alike  
From the crown of a white glass hill.  
If we, his daughters cannot be so lucky, so plucky, and so well equipped  
With magical maille and apples of gold, well… it is not beyond understanding;  
We are none of us third sons of forest peasantry, after all. 

But if you must pity, do not pity me, for I do not wish it.  
No clucking tongues, no tears shed for the Princess  
Who was neither eldest and Heir, nor youngest and Most Lovely.  
Save sympathy for little Aramista, plucked from her roses by a passing ogre.  
He did not care that she was the darling of Court and Queen,  
Only that she looked golden and sweet,  
If a little skinny.  
Save sorrow for serene Kitaria, shouldering the dispassionate weight  
Of a marriage of state;  
Nary a handsome Jack, nor plucky Jane to prick the heart,  
Bestir the ivory breast, or singe the royal lineage with tinder-spark unbidden.  
But do not pity me my lot, for it was of my own making.  
My fault.  
Entirely.  
Entirely.

Stories will later tell, I suppose, that the Dragon stole me away;  
Caught me from my horse at hunt,  
Plucked me from a royal parade,  
Or ravaged the land until I was surrendered up to him;  
A canapé in coronet; a royal nonpareil;  
A pretty, sticky toffee in satin slippers to bait the quest for a better class of Jack  
Than will come to slay a marauder of livestock alone.  
Or perhaps they will say that my mother  
(Who will surely become Stepmother for the crime,)  
Grew jealous of my beauty and summoned the Dragon to carry me away.  
And we may, for drama's sake, scatter a silver comb, mirror shards,  
Needles and silk thread about my tower room,  
For proper princesses, you know, sit just so,  
And make tiny, perfect stitches out of all their sunny days.

They do not ride to hunt with their father and brothers, these proper princesses;  
Do not ford streams and jump bramble hedges  
With legs astride and wild hair flying;  
Do not turn aside from the belling pack to seek out  
The pitiful groan of a beast unseen;  
Do not venture shattered saplings, and scorch-curled ferns  
Seeking after groans and sighs.  
And never, these golden ball girls,  
Upon finding a Dragon felled in the new-made clearing  
Would tear their linen hems to bind its wounds  
(Some sword's edge straight, others spear's thrust deep.)  
Oh no, they do not ease the bat-span vermilion wing  
From the pinewood tangle while their panicked palfrey pulls loose its tether  
And drums a fleeing tattoo through the woods.  
And they do not, these prized and precious girls,  
Most certainly do not fetch stream water,  
Diamond–cold in soft royal hands,  
And help the poor thing drink.

I did those things.  
I freed the Dragon from the wreckage of his fall.  
I burnt my hands on his blood.  
I soothed his great, fretting head across my knees,  
Though his horns bruised my ribs.  
I stood for my Dragon's life when the huntsmen found my ranging horse,  
And tracked her back to where we hid.  
T'was I who sent them off, never seeing what lay in the new-crushed dell.  
They bowed to my will.  
Mine, child of the Woodcutter King,  
(And no less brave or clever, I decided, for want of a magical stallion.)  
They went, the beast unseen,  
And until his sky bright eyes opened in awareness, I stayed.

A Dragon's great size, his scales and wings and fiery breath  
Do not banish him to far off caves and wastelands, it seems,  
Nor does his hoard come creeping coin by coin,  
Like gleaming mice on tiny, shiny feet.  
I'd hardly thought, before, what magic  
Might draw hoard and hoarder together.  
(Dragons are rarer than Ogres and Hags, after all,  
And a Princess must have priorities.)

A Dragon may go shod and shaven, it seems, at need,  
And bring his might in manly form to mine or market hall,  
Or wherever there are shining things to be got.  
Fierce in finance they are, canny in commerce, tireless at trade;  
Men at the barrel-head would blench to know the hand they've shaken  
Will, betimes, turn iron clawed and scaled from end to end,  
And that their cool coin will mound up high in a far, forgotten cavern  
And heated scales will press it palm-close and cozy for decades,  
Or until some thieving Jack comes sniffing.

This, I did not know when I turned my father's men aside.  
This, I did not learn until the Dragon rose before me,  
Broad and bronze in the dappled shade, with a Jack's rakish grin  
And nary a fang or scale to be seen;  
So beautiful, he was, so daring and darling that my heart caught fast in his golden hair  
And could not struggle free.  
I had saved him, thinking I did not care to see such majesty fallen low  
And pitiful with pain,  
Not when it was in my power to charm him, to tame him,  
To bring this mighty creature into my debt,  
For this is how such things are done, as any child knows  
And Princesses better than most.

I had not known he would be beautiful,  
Or what a weighty thing his gratitude would be.  
And he _was_ grateful, this you must understand.  
My Dragon, so fiercely bright the thought of his eyes scorched hidden places,  
He was grateful to me,  
He was fond of me,  
He was smitten,  
And he courted with all the passionate ferocity of a midwinter dream  
(When snow and silence make all folk mad, a little.)  
Oh, but imagine it if you can –  
Fine, diamond ferocity, intense as molten gold,  
A blazing desire spent not upon rubies, platinum, pearls,  
Jade, ivory, emeralds or any gleaming thing,  
But trained instead, upon a girl's tender heart.  
Might not even a Jack's canny daughter,  
(Too wise to nibble at gingerbread houses,)  
Catch fire and blaze under such regard?

Stop that smile, sly one. Swallow that sniggering jest.  
This ballad runs not to barnyard or barrack room.  
It is not to be sung, ale in fist when the tavern night winds down to farts and foolishness.  
Make your own stories cheap if you will, but never mine  
Never my love –  
Not when the cost has been so very, very great.

My lover's eyes were hot as gas-flame or cloudless July,  
His hair all gold when the sun seduced its curls,  
His teeth pearl-smooth and flashing  
At my smallest joke, my simplest question, my merest glance betimes.  
Oh, he charmed us all, from Chatelaine to chambermaid.  
This hapless Lord, of gentle speech and manner --  
Beset by robbers in a country not his own,  
and rescued by the Princess' own kind hand --  
The story alone was enough.  
Tongues wagged wild at Court,  
And many hearts made a futile racket beneath their silk and stays.  
My Lover played his part well.  
He offered the doubtful nothing to fear,  
The fearful nothing to doubt,  
Was all charm and generosity, regardless of rank or connection.  
But it was for me that his eyes burned hottest,  
And I knew to the depths of my clever heart that he loved me  
As no other had ever known love.

And yes, he did love me, of that I am sure.  
And there is nothing in that to pity.  
Nothing.  
Nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

Of course we could not stay.  
How could his vast appetites,  
Enough to feed his great and hidden fire,  
Go unnoticed, himself so trim and fine?   
How could his perfection weather jealous scrutiny for long?  
He feared for me, most of all, he said.  
He breathed his concerns into the tender space behind my ear,   
Whispered of our enemies within the court;   
Of ambitious men who saw me as chattel,   
The engine of their ascent.  
He told me that Kings marked wealth not in armies, gold, or knowledge,   
But the power that wound about their daughters' unwed hands,   
Ring-bound and sold to distant, powerful Princes.  
(For all the good Jacks come to their crowns through valor, of course,  
And are not born in palaces,   
Combed sleek by slaves at whom they throw their hunting boots,  
And promised genteel brides with bright-bruising skin as their right of birth.)  
I thought of loveless Kitaria, and I trembled.  
I thought of my father's Seneschal, Generals, Advisers,   
How they watched me as grocers watch their plums,  
Gorgon-grim lest the fruit be bruised before it is bought,   
And I knew we could not stay where my rank   
Might see me sold away from him who loved me   
So fiercely,  
So dearly,  
So well.

And yet, though he was mine, and I was his  
He was not Mine; was no fit man, however charming or rich,  
To claim a Princess' hand, unknown as he was to any Court,   
His lands and title a feline fiction.  
Nor was I His, for our Kingdom faced no Witch Queen's curse,   
Ogreish army, Faerie spite, or Bears.  
Not even a plague of bored Brownies wrinkled the stultified peace,  
And had I a golden ball to lose, with him lurking at well's bottom...  
Well.   
There are some tricks may only be played the once.  
And so he could not ask for my hand.  
But I, oh I could offer it.  
And so I did.  
And so he took it,   
And all the rest of me alongside.

And so you must not pity me, for I have flown.  
I have seen the patchwork earth in fire-pricked velvet flow;  
Have smelt wind so pure, so wild it had no word for sweat or smoke or tears;  
Have shivered in awe so cold and wide,   
Not even my lover's blaze could warm it full away.  
When darkness pressed us close in the earth-smelling damp,   
I shivered against his scales, as stiff and cold as the gold beneath my back,   
And my dreams brimmed full of empty sky,   
And tiny fires, too small, too far below to warm me.

It was not that he turned cold; I know this.  
How could he chill, brimful of fire and sunlight,  
This beast of flame, seething with passions   
The Courtly Dance had long denied?  
If it seemed cold in the high, lonely mountains, then surely it was me --  
Hearth-pet Princess that I was,   
A silly, spoilt girl,  
Vain enough to think the empyrean reach might welcome me unchallenged,   
And set me down unchanged from how I had gone aloft.  
I had so very much to learn.  
He had so very much to teach me   
Once the spoils of Court were fallen far behind us,  
Once the mountains reared high   
To wall the kindly sky in silence, stone and snow. 

I learnt first of satin slippers, broidered o'er with glass and silver;  
Quite unfit for cave-dark wanderings,   
Half lit with candle flame or distant sun.  
Caves are dangerous places,   
Where slanting drifts of coin and sharp-edged crystal may slither   
From beneath doeskin soles,  
And pitch one headlong into pool or pillar, or spur of heartless stone   
At the merest nudge of wing, or dreaming tail-thrash.  
T'was luck that only he could see my motley skin,   
Marked worse than lentil-mattresses could do.  
He forgave the bruises, laughed fondly, ruffled my hair with brimstone breath,   
And called me clumsy duckling, precious, and his fawn.  
Then he took the slippers, would have burnt them to glittering ash,  
Heeding no protest of mine;   
No matter that my mother had made them just for me  
To match my sixteenth birthday ballgown,   
'They had betrayed their mistress,' he said.  
They had done me harm,   
And he would tolerate no harm to what was his.  
And was I not his?  
Save that the shoes were fairy-blessed, and valuable,   
That turned his wrath aside,  
Just enough to spare that pair, alone out of them all.

But he was right, you know,  
For bare-shod, I soon learnt the way of creeping,  
Mouse-quiet past his bed   
(He slept so light, so wary, as owners of great hoards must sleep.)  
And I learnt to go soft, bestirring neither coin nor cup,   
Nor tripping over bones in the darkness.  
And if the rocky path outside was unforgiving to my feet,  
Well.   
What need had I to venture far from my lover's lair?  
What need had I to walk out, and seek the coarse company   
Of plotting, greedy mountain peasants;   
Witches' girls,   
Woodcutter's sons,  
And such grim, suspicious folk as may be found in uncouth places  
Where Dragons haunt the sky?

What use had I for riding boots when I could keep no horse  
From my bright lover's appetite?  
What use had I for brogans when the mountain's peak   
Bore no fit soil for gardens,   
Gave root to neither flower nor tree   
Beyond a few grudging thistles clinging sour and stubborn to the stone?  
And what need had I for fine gowns or jewels with no Courtiers to see?  
My lover thought me fairer unadorned,   
He assured me,  
And, he said, I would most likely lose them in the dark,   
Shred their hems on jutting stone,   
Smirch silk with soot, drench velvet in the cavern pool,   
Than care for such beautiful things as they deserved.  
He was an expert, you see, in beautiful things;  
He never misplaced the slightest tin plate or crystal chip,  
And knew by touch the minting mark of every coin upon his mounded bed.  
Better that he should take my treasures on,  
Calculate my pearls and combs into the tally  
That swirled and sparked beneath his horns, and keep them   
Somewhere they would be safe,  
Forever.

He brought me plainer clothes;   
Dun and homespun, loose at waist, looser at bosom,   
Smelling just a little like chamomile soap, rye flour, children and despair.   
Such garb the like of which I would not ruin  
In the sooty, metal-edged gloom where he made our home.

Where we made our home.   
I meant to say we.  
I did.


	3. Chapter 3

It was in such mean attire that I first saw the stranger,  
Wandering unwary through high meadows the locals knew to fear.  
From this I knew him, as much as by his robes, pack mule and tonsure,  
To be dangerous beyond measure.  
Prying shepherds may go missing in the lonely heights;   
Meddling maidens may fail to return from their flower- and gossip-gatherings;  
And thieving Jacks who come sniffing after treasure  
Do not always return to collect their tavern bragging rights.  
These things will happen in wild places.  
But a priest,   
A man of name and letters, not given to fictions or fancies;  
Who goes nowhere he does not mean to go,   
And is expected at his road's end;   
Here was a man, for all his temperate face and humble mien,  
Brimful of peril.

I fled him,   
Fast as I could with the slithering scree chewing at my toes,  
And my heart fluttered, a trapped bird in a stranger's woolen stays.  
He would not leave his mule and pack, I thought,   
Surely he would follow the goat-thin track downward  
To a terse village welcome, and a dust-clung church.  
They wanted a savior like him,   
A holy foil to the devil of whom they had learnt not to speak too loud,  
Lest his wings eclipse their sun forever.

No,  
I did not think the young priest would follow me.  
I did not guess he had seen my hair unbound in the sun,   
A banner of cinnamon silk against the sky.  
I did not guess that compassionate concern, or damnable curiousity  
Would spur him to the chase like a braying Hound of God.  
An awful rattling we made upon the mountainside,  
Enough to wake the weariest Wyrm from slumber.  
Had my Love been home, not ranged afar in service to his gold,  
That Priest in his cursed sandals,   
Could never have caught me,  
Brought me to bay at the very gate of home,  
Shocked me colder than stone with my own name,  
Shouted out in the aching tones of home;  
The long-lost cant of warm valleys, orchards, and sunlight fields  
With no more peril than transfigured frogs in muddy pools  
And an Ogre or two.

No Hag's curse could have caught me tighter.

I begged him to go.  
I told him it was not safe for the likes of him so far aloft,   
That the treeline was the end of Man's territory,   
And above it, were Monsters.  
He would not go.  
I would have said it was no safer for me,   
Should the Dragon scent a stranger's breath upon his threshold.  
He was chivalrous, after a priestly fashion, and he would have gone, I'm sure,  
Only...

Only he offered me bread; travel-hardened,   
Crumbling, stale from weeks on the road.   
Still, I had not seen its like in oh, so very long.  
And I was so tired of meat,   
(However freshly got and hot, its bloody, rank thud upon the stone  
Always made me flinch,  
Which always made the Dragon laugh.)   
And dear God how could I dare to ask, with hunger gnawing at my spine,   
What kind of meat was this when it still had skin?  
And did it know its name?  
One bald haunch looks like another in a Dragon's eyes;  
Fat drips and gristle pops the same in flame,  
And I was not so spoilt as to turn up my once-delicate nose at his generosity,  
For long.  
If my tender belly rebelled and would not settle,   
I took care the Dragon never heard me retch --  
He thought me too thin already.

So for the price of a lump of road biscuit, I betrayed my heart,  
And let the stranger stay.   
I let him speak of towns where my name was known,   
My face sketched in song, my story told   
(At least unto the question mark where all knowing of it ended.)  
Places where they knew my Father sought any word of me;  
That my brothers quested afar;   
And one, who came west to the mountains, had never returned;  
That my Mother dreamt me in peril;   
Starving, cold, and trapped at the whims of a monster,  
And wept for weeks;  
That my Sister consulted with Witches for news.  
I sat in that cold autumn sunlight,   
Let him feed me bread and apples, sharp, hard cheese,   
And the news of my Father's court.  
I let him call me by my snug-fitting name,   
Mother given, summer-warm, and garden-bright,   
And sounding not at all like a smoke-huff grunt,   
Like "Woman,"  
Or "You.")   
I tried not to think how long it had been   
Since that name had suited me.

And then I sent him away, I swear I did.  
He was a priest, a good man, an honest man,   
Sworn to a God beyond any temptation a mere Princess,  
Especially one bare shod, thin, grubby and wrapped in stolen clothes could offer.  
I did not offer.  
He put not a toe inside the cavern's shadow,  
Glimpsed not a golden glimmer within.  
I told him no slandering lies,   
Spun no tale of woe there in the bright sunshine.  
However low I had fallen, a King's daughter had still some little pride;  
I did not wish him to know the depth and number of my failings.  
One thing only did I give him, when he pleaded,  
Insisted, and swore to return if I gave it not.  
To ward him off, I relented, borrowed foolscap, ink, and a fine-made pen  
And wrote a note, one page in my long-unpracticed hand,  
To tell my Father that I was well, and wished for nothing.

It was a mistake.  
It was a disaster.  
It was an act that would bring ruin, though I knew it not then.  
How was I to know? When had I gone out of the cavern's sight?  
When had I ventured near as a stone's throw to the treeline,   
Let alone the village, or any other town below it?  
I thought he would take months to send it onward,  
For winter would come sooner than any messenger, surely.  
And in those months, he would, perhaps, misplace my note  
Or forget why he ever wished to have it.  
How could I know this Priest with his poky, thistle-full mule  
Could send my note, spurred by rumors of reward, from the mountain's flanks   
To the Logger's river town, where barges fly swifter than birds, surer than rumours,   
Arrow-straight into the heart of the Woodcutter's Kingdom?  
With the turning leaves, the damage was all done.

I knew only, at that time, that the Priest went his way soon after,  
And that once his shadow was gone,   
I swept every crumb from our doorstep  
And scrubbed the stone with ash and cold grease   
(Rancid-rank, but the best I could do by way of soap.)   
And as I did, I prayed for that guileless Priest's sake,   
That my deceit would be shelter enough for him,   
And perhaps for me.

It was not.  
But my prayer went not entirely unanswered,  
For my Lover, when he read in the mule's tracks   
The sign of an interloper so close to his hoard and home,  
Took his accounting only unto me, and did not tear the village apart  
In search of his imagined cuckold.

Don't think I fail to see that pitying look.  
Strike it from your eyes;  
It was not so bad as all that.  
I know him, you see?   
I know his moods like a boatman knows his river  
And the rapids might shake me bow and stern,  
But I know how to hold on until the river calms.  
Nor must you blame him, really,  
For it is only that, for all his great power,  
For all his might and towering flame,  
My lover scares so very easily.  
Sometimes he cannot help but rise to battle  
Even when there is no foe to fight   
But me.

I am all he has, you see?   
There is only me to understand him,   
Only me (and his bed of gold,) to love him,  
Or to care.


	4. Chapter 4

Autumn breathed its last in storms   
That laced the mountain's knees in snow.  
Church bell echoes wandered through the trees,   
And jangled off the high, bare rocks.  
Smoke in the ringing air stank of iron and coke   
And anvil-song   
Though the village blacksmith was long since gone.  
(Suspicious, the Dragon said,   
Untrustworthy, with eyes too narrow and hands too big.)

I was alone that day; aloft in the storm,   
Fancy-taken in my bare feet and cloak of fur,  
(New-gifted, as I'd healed from that awful Autumn afternoon,)  
To climb the dizzy heights and peer down   
Down a-derry derry down.  
To stare along the lonely wind,   
The bending trees,   
The mountain's knees,  
And scry the distant river through the storm.   
To stand in solemn silence with my head pressed hard to Heaven,  
And think how might it be to have wings of my own,  
And stepping from the stone, to spread them wide and fly  
Or fall.  
In such snow-soft pillowing clouds, either would do.  
And oh, you mustn't look at me so,  
You mustn't think me mad,  
For I was terribly sane just then,  
And I had learnt not to mind the cold so very much.

So it was that while I hugged the sky and thought of wings,   
I glimpsed creeping steel through a break in the trees.   
Through raveling flurry, shredding cloud and creaking evergreen  
I saw them come;  
Horses under torches, orange with ironlight;  
Roan flanks, oil-dark hooves and smoke-puff, gusting breath at the burden of  
Burnished steel and dark-boiled leather,   
Such barding livery as only sees the eve of battle.  
And knights as well.  
I had seen such dreadful display before --   
(Jacks will find Giants, as they say, and Dragons, Hags and Ogres much the same,)  
I had learnt to run into darkness when Heroes came,   
And hide myself behind the gold  
(Better spoils, I knew, than I,)  
Until the gory business was done, and only ash and echo-screams remained.  
Then, summoned at length, emerge   
To roll another shattered shell of Knightsteel clanging into the trees --   
Mementos, lest the villagers take notions. 

Oh yes, I had seen Jacks come in boots and shoes and brown bare feet,  
But never in such numbers as these.   
Never a company of steel, in bristling rank and file,  
Never such horses crowding the high meadow with hide and haunch,  
Never such streams of riding fire, like a serpent through the storm  
Winding unerringly to my nest.

I was caught out;   
No sheltering hoard to shield me.  
They were nearer the cave, mounted,   
And though storm-cloaked, I dared creep only so near,  
For there was precious little cover by the cavern's mouth anymore.  
I lurked just close enough to see the scouts,   
Boldest of that gleaming company,  
Halloo the monster's lair.  
The name they called out had once been mine.  
I crouched behind middling boulders and tried not to breathe  
Or weep.  
They would go.   
They would surely go when they got no answer,   
When they got no fight.  
They would steal what they could carry, and they would ride away  
And perhaps I would not have to see it  
When my Lover tracked them down and claimed,   
With ruddy interest, what was his.

But when the heroes clambered out again,   
Their gauntlets brimmed, not with proper plunder,  
But rather the fluttering waft of sunlight silk,   
And delicate slippers, sewn with silver threads and glass.  
A rosewood chest full of pretty trinkets   
To make a Princess glitter and smile,  
Once upon a time.  
Only that, they stole: only me,   
Only the tokens I had left to show of the She who had been,   
Carried off, now, in iron-hinged stranger's hands.  
'For proof,' one of them hailed the rest, careless above the keening wind,   
'Here's proof she has been here.'

They did not stay after that.   
The wind is fierce as flame, so high against the clouds,  
And they were valley folk; broad and kind, and not fitted  
To such grudging camps as this.  
They went; a column of flame and steel   
Tracing each curve of the long road downward --  
The road I had never quite seen clear between the trees.  
(Not that I had looked for it, of course.)  
I saw it now as the serpent of men went their firelit way  
And took the ghost of me along for hostage.

I hoped they would ride all night,   
All week without resting.  
I hoped they would ride forever and fly,   
Home to the valley's bosom, and never more,  
Not one of them, brave the haunted heights  
In search of Lost Girls' slippers.

A scrap of silk, golden thread, fairy luck, glass beads;  
A smudge of gilt on ivory heels in which a girl might dance, but never run;  
'A pittance,' I told myself  
As they went their way, and the snow drank up their tracks,  
He would not care. What they'd taken had little value,  
And anyway, was mine.  
And so I slipped into my lover's bedchamber, struck myself a little light,   
And settled down to count.  
Yes.   
I was very much a fool.  
I know that now.

Do they tell each other about us, I wonder?  
Gather in ruddy caverns where all is gold and fury,  
To rumble tales of we heartless ones who are so very cruel to them?  
Do they warn each other of Princesses' lies;  
Honour-smirching, monster-making of the poor, trusting reptile  
Who tried his best, kept her safe,   
Gave her wealth, and fought all comers,  
Only to find himself betrayed,  
Deceived, his great heart trodden under little dancing feet?  
And do the other Dragons nod and grumble  
That we are all alike in grace, greed, and guile,   
Wanting only the chance and choice moment to turn,  
And to show ourselves false as fool's gold?  
That we cannot be,   
Not one, not even one of us, trusted?

Do the wise advise their jealous brothers,  
(Hunched low over steaming cups of spite,  
While they clean our hopes from between their teeth,   
Spit our promises like cherry pits into the molten pool,  
And drip occasional, unnoticed rubies from their hooked red claws,)  
That we Princesses must be shown   
How fragile is our beauty, and how fickle the power it lends?  
That, once we are not so proud and pretty anymore,  
stripped of flashing smiles and courtly graces,   
When not even our closest kin would know us,  
And we are left with faces to make peasants spit  
And ward 'gainst evil eye,  
That only then are we fit companions?

Do they learn to treat us all this way?   
Or was it only me?  
Did I fail, somehow, to learn his every lesson,  
So that it was by claw and flame I must be taught the betrayal  
In lying letters to spying fathers,  
Thieving knights lured to debauchery on my absent lover's bed,  
Then sent their smirking way,   
Taking each a token of my favors between them?  
Need I have learned repentance through fire?

He did not mean me to die  
Even in his flaming rage, he loved me too much, I am sure,  
And could not bear to see another take me away --  
Not even Death itself.  
And so I lived; neither burnt to twistwood and gristle on the melting gold,  
Nor drowned face-down in the cavern pool  
Where my dervish flailing sprawled to an end.

I remember no more, save that he who so loved me   
That he could leave nothing of me for anyone else to love,  
Did not once look back when he left me there   
In hissing steam and ringing silence,  
Alive.


	5. Chapter 5

Do not ask me how I stood, or when.   
I cannot tell you by what means I walked or crawled,   
Claw-fingered, stump-footed through the icy stays   
That winter wrenched tight around the world.  
I can only tell you that my next clear memory was of bells  
And light through coloured glass,   
And haunting hymnsong voices.

I could just see him through a swatch of Virgin blue;  
His cup, his chaplet, his pile of bread before him at the altar,  
His face turned toward heaven, alone amid the throng still unafraid.  
His voice was the loudest in that little house of God  
His prayer so clear it cut me bloodless in the winter night,  
And I could not go in.  
For had I not known the flames of Hell?  
And did I need a glass to see that my sins smouldered on my face  
Where none could fail to read them?  
I had danced to my destruction as surely as did Eve,  
Or the Snow-Girl's mother.  
There was no place there for me in that holy house,   
And anyway...  
The candle light hurt my eyes.  
I took myself back to the square,   
Where wind had driven the snow up deep as secrets,   
And the houses did not so closely loom,  
And there I surrendered  
In snow as soft as clouds.  
Once its kiss turned wet against my eyelids,   
I thought I might open them to watch the moon  
And wait.

And then I remember the crunch of wagon wheels.

And then I remember dreaming of my mother, singing a lullabye while a mule brayed And hooves rattled nearby.

And then I remember a ponderous sweep of pine branches, arching like cathedral bones  
Against an empyrean sky.

And then I remember a salty, greasy taste;  
Bitter, like willowbark  
Or tears.

And sometime after that, I woke,   
Feeling as though I had slept for a hundred years.

The Witch had a permanent twist in her lip,  
Lacy scars that knotted like rope from nose to ear.  
An ironic, fraying end arched one eyebrow forever in disbelief.   
The Witch had an eye as blue as deep water,  
As wise as winter, and as merciful as spring.  
Just the one;   
A smooth green pebble held the other's place  
And reflected no light at all.  
The Witch had a hand curled up tight like a claw.   
Somehow, despite the scars, it was not rough on my savaged skin,  
But gentle as milk, scented with herbs and honey.  
The Witch had no voice,   
But she made herself plain without recourse to words;  
A corvid croak, or cackling laugh, and all,  
From her girl to her goat to her geese, to her guest, knew the Witch's will.  
A greenstone glare, and not one of us would disobey.  
She did not often glare.  
Rather she smiled, or as near as her scarred face would allow,  
And how could I not remember, when her blue eye sparkled with mirth   
Or welled sympathy;  
When she held me, shaking in nightmare's wake  
As the winter nights ground on in towering silence,  
Dreams of fire, and a welter of sodden sheets;   
That all Witches begin their lives as Maidens?

She gave me herb salves and tea, and my weeping skin healed  
Fast and sound as a fairy's blessing, though not so fair.  
Not even magic could do that.  
She gave me simple fare, the like of which makes peasants strong  
And Princesses live, despite themselves.  
She gave me gentle work to keep the idling, pitiful hours at bay.   
And she gave no sign that my scars or silly tears,   
My weak hands or numb-clumsy feet,  
My flinching fear of wing-shadows in the sky,   
Or my night-screaming upset her in the least.  
She gave no sign of knowing I was ruined,  
And seemed to think I only wanted patience, peace, and feeding up.  
Some days I nearly believed it myself.

Word came up the valley from time to time, of the Dragon,   
My lover, my destroyer, my terrible mistake.  
I could not always fail to hear the tales;  
He was raiding openly along the rich riverlands of the Woodcutter King,  
Burning crop and croft, plucking sheep and peasant girls from the fields,  
And making war, now and then, with the bands of knights   
Sent out to bring him down.  
If he returned to the mountain,   
If he looked for me in the slag-scorched cavern that had been our home,  
If he raged to find me not where he had left me,  
I did not know it.   
No fire scathed the forest, no belling panic rang from the village up  
Or down the mountain's flanks,  
And though the sound of rushing wind made me flinch and duck,  
To escape the sky's broad blue stare,  
I saw neither scale nor skin of my Dragon.  
Only by tales did I know, secondhand,  
That he lived at all.

Then one day it was not the miller,   
Come to trade flour for a potion-cure,   
Or the barge town midwife, or lamed logger  
Who carried news of the Beast to the Witch's cothold,  
But a knight -- weary-eyed and smirched with dust and soot and blood.  
And there was nowhere I could run,  
For soap was brewing on the hearth, and I was wanted lest it scorch,   
And haunt the cottage with smoky nightmares.  
And so I stayed when he came in,  
Though through the open door I glimpsed his gear,  
And recognized the blaze of sunny silk he'd bound to his lance-haft  
By way of battle flag.  
His pitying glance at my firenook corner made it plain though;  
He knew not who had worn that gown last.

The beast no longer flew -- that was his news.   
The scarlet wings were lance-tattered lace now,  
And now the Dragon lay at bay in the ruins of a town   
A day's ride down, between the mountain's toes.  
Army-ringed, his bolt-hole, but thick with hostages the Crown,  
He told us, looking down,  
Did not care to spend.  
He had been sent to ask, he said, for poison.

There followed long stifling silence, and then I realized  
She was looking at me solemn and still,  
As though we did not both know where, on her crowded shelves,   
Just such a poison lay.   
Her eyes, sweet and grave, fixed me in place --  
The green no better clear than the blue, as she waited  
For me to decide.

I did not see the knight riddle me out.  
I only heard his ragged gasp,  
And glimpsed, corner-eyed,   
The firelight slide along his kneeling steel.  
Palm to plated breast, shocked face tucked reverently low,   
He coughed.  
And dreading lest I hear him say 'your Highness',  
I lunged up; fetched the black bottle quick as I could,  
Thrust it out in my curled claws, and might have cried 'take it and be gone!'  
But the Witch, my savior, my friend, curled her warm claw over mine,  
Pressed my trembling shoulder still  
And, smelling all of chamomile soap, rye flour, children and hope,  
Whispered soft in my ear the first, the only word  
I ever heard her say;  
"Go."


	6. Chapter 6

We rode the day in silence, this stranger and I,  
Hemmed in with snow crunch, armor's clank,  
And a thousand wordless questions.  
The Witch lent her mule and cart,   
For I could not yet  
(Nor, perhaps, ever again,)   
Ride astride,   
And would not bear the cradle of the stranger's arms and thighs,  
However nobly intended.   
Neither, it seems, found in the other's company   
Any sort of comfort,  
For every step and jostle ground out the silent questions,  
Until the gristle and grief gave way to truth;  
That somehow I had not seen my happy ending's sad decay –  
Not until the end.  
It had seemed, before, a gradual collapse of courtesy into disdain,  
Into scorn, into disgust, into hatred, and murder  
While I struggled in vain to please, to comfort, to understand just how  
I could wound my love so terribly that he must wound me back.

And what could I say of it to this polished messenger  
With his innocent, outrage --  
This questing Bravo, appalled and awkward in the shadow  
Of the sunlight gown I had refused to put on again?  
What answer could I make to those guileless eyes  
Which had seen the blood of monsters,  
But never the terrible grace of their loving?  
What could I tell him of restless passion, reckless abandon,   
And the awful joy of being utterly overwhelmed?  
He could not understand.  
I did not wish him to;  
I would not smirch his honest shine with ash  
Just because my own was scorched all away.

Nor did he ask, in all those mule-slow, downward hours,  
'Why?'  
Merely, 'was I weary, did I hunger, should we rest?'  
I was. I did. But I could not bear to tarry,  
For the wind flung greasy woodsmoke up the canyons  
And scoured the sky with guilt.  
Flame gouts rent the far darkness  
And battle thunder shook even the stoical mule's nerve.  
But on we rode, till the dawn-cracked sky bled, rose and gold   
Across the sprawled and smoking wreck of the village   
We had come to late to save.

The mule rebelled, not to be goaded onward,  
And so the knight rode down alone to his peers,  
Bruised survivors of the monster's midnight sally.  
The Woodcutter's banner crowned a billowing smithy,  
As singed and stubborn as the knights below,   
And I might have wondered --  
Did the Hero King rest beneath it?  
Or did my brothers dress their lances thus   
To brave the beast who had stolen me away?

I might have wondered.  
Only there in the smoke and granite shatter  
Of a tiny churchyard, lay the Dragon himself --  
The crimson hulk on which I had wagered my heart  
And lost,  
And I was lost,   
Lost all again.

My lover lay athwart the crumpled church spire,   
Twisted, limp and smoldering, much as I had seen him first.   
Thicker, though, his thorny scales; darker, bristling now  
With spear-hafts, arrows, swords.  
Black, his claws, one horn sheared ragged,  
His beard a crusted clump as he laid his head   
In the lap of a shattered angel.  
When had he grown into a monster?

Then, golden and rosy as the creeping dawn, I saw her;  
A soft, silly girl with love skulking blue and foolish in her eyes.   
She crept like a cat past the Quest of Knights whose fellows  
Lay sundered in the Dragon's gory bed.  
They knew he breathed, seethed yet with life,  
And scented the dawn with sulfur, cinnamon,  
And blood --  
And they spared no glare for a simple girl   
Wandering witless where she oughtn't.  
And she, clever puss, gave no man cause to ask;  
What had she in that basket beneath her cloak of riding red?  
Where did she mean to go,  
And with whom?

I left the mule cart,   
Took my blackthorn stick and black glass bottle,  
And rushed to catch the pretty fool before the Dragon.

She screamed a little, seeing me hunched and leering  
Through ragged smoke at the churchyard gate,  
Clutched her iron-crossed throat with one hand,  
Her traveling bundle with the other.  
I laughed, crow-cold, at her warding sign.  
I told her to go while still she could go,  
Then cackled again when she called me Witch,   
Hag, Jealous Betrayer.   
She swore to stand with him who loved her  
As no other knew love.

Then I sketched a meaningless symbol  
In the smoking air, and named it a curse  
To turn her silly face, and all her children's besides,  
Into that of an ass -- the better to reflect her wit   
Should she put one foot inside the hallow ground --  
And she ran.  
I would have run as well when I was her,  
And had more fear of Hags than handsome Dragons.  
Before I learnt how fearsome beauty could be.

And then where could I go, but down  
Down a-derry derry down?  
To stare along the foetid wind,   
The tumbled graves,   
The palisade,  
And trace his flexing hulk athwart the steam.  
To stand in solemn silence with my eyes fixed on Hell,  
And to think how might it feel to have no heart of my own,  
And pouring my small draught out, anoint his gaping wounds with death  
Or agony.  
In such chill revenge, either would do.

My Witch-gifted boots scraped moss and soot,  
Cryptstone, cindered pews, and dead men's shoes,  
And so the Dragon heard me come.   
He hailed me unseen in a brittle voice, like saplings   
Split beneath a terrible weight – called soft a name not mine.   
Her name, I reasoned, and did not answer.  
Then the fickle wind reconsidered,   
Unraveled the veil of ruined dreams between us,  
Left us eye to startled eye across the broken angel's back.

"You," he said after long silence,   
And his brimstone scorn burned my eyes to water.  
"I might have known you'd come."  
And then he smiled, smugly grotesque around a chainmail scrap,  
One eye gone elf-shot hollow and vague.  
And in my palm, the little bottle curled,  
Weighty as all the world's evils.  
It was fragile.  
Hurled, would shatter at even this slight distance,  
And he was so vast now, pinked and punctured in every limb  
That the liquor could not fall at all amiss.  
Not a drop would splash me.  
Not a soul would care.

But then I nodded, and knowing it a terrible thing,  
Smiled.  
"I did come," I allowed, and set the bottle at a marble angel's feet,  
"But not for you."  
Then turning, flinched to find  
The Knight, my Bravo, lance-length behind me,  
Mounted, girded silver-bright, and watching,  
As the waiting Quest of his Knight-brethren watched,  
Silent beneath the Woodcutter's battleflag.

"Lady?" he said, and we both ignored  
The Dragon's caustic snort.  
He leaned him low across his horse's crest  
Hand out, as though to swing me up before  
And whisk me galloping away from the crude beast's insult.  
I turned toward the gate  
And managed not to laugh at either of us.

"I am weary," I told him,   
And all the rest, before I walked away.


	7. Chapter 7

Do not ask me how they killed him  
I cannot tell you by what means they cut his thread,  
Draught-poisoned, lance-spitted through the raging heart  
Or bled quietly, inexorably dry.   
I can only tell you that the mule, wise creature,   
Had not wandered far afield,  
And that at his bridle, awaiting my return,  
Stood the Woodcutter King.

And oh, I had thought myself to cold for this,  
My heart too scarred so to leap and flutter,  
My stomach too soured for the sudden twist of hope,  
My guilt-scarred face too stiff to crumple  
Under that tearful, terrible regard.

"It is you," he said, when silence stretched too thin  
And the ghosts of our breath crowded whisper-close,  
"I had hoped you'd come."  
And weeping, smiling, he strode to me,  
His ironclad arms outstretched to gather me like cordwood to his breast,   
As if he could shoulder me home singing to that long-lost valley springtime.  
Oh, I had thought my heart broken already,  
I truly had.

I pressed a claw-curled hand at his breastplate,   
And, knowing it a terrible thing,  
I bowed.  
"I did come, Majesty," I said,   
Waved my stick at the tumult below,  
And prayed my voice, at least, would stay true,  
"But I did not come for you."  
And turning, would have fled,  
Whipped that mule to frothing to escape the horrid  
Welling softness I could feel,  
Melting my spine from within, turning me to butter   
And silly, bitter tears.

But I had not a Jack's luck, nor magical boots  
Nor gold-saddled destrier,  
Nor even, anymore, a Princess's dancing grace.  
His hands were gentle as summer when my feet betrayed me,  
And he swept me off the gravel road  
And onto the cart-seat without a word.  
"You mustn't," I managed,  
Crow croaking, taut as wire when he swung up beside  
And shook the mule's reins, slap flap along his back,  
"Great King, I am not who you think-"

"No more am I," he said, and clucked his tongue  
As the iron wheels crackled, coming about.  
"For you think me a King, and a Hero of legend."

"And are you not?" Easier now to cackle, hag-mad,   
With my heart breaking in my ruined throat.  
He flinched, a little, when I rapped the graven steel  
(Three steeds, rampant athwart a mountain made of glass,)   
Which spanned his breast with fame.

But he shook his head, and up the road he drove --  
Away from the smoke and murder,   
That clogged the guilt-grey valley,  
Away from the bitter end  
Beyond which I had never thought to look.  
"I am not," he said, buckling the iron loose with a clang  
That rattled winter crows, heckling from the trees.  
"What I am, is a Father.  
One who has sorely missed his daughter,  
And would know her from ten thousand just alike."  
And here, he loosed his hand from its sheltering steel,   
Swept a grizzle of hair, once chestnut brown,  
From his careworn face, and I could not help but see  
The Woodcutter's son inside the coat of Kingly maille.  
A man I had been too young to see,  
When I had seen him last,  
When I had shamed him last.

And I knew then, I would let him take me home –   
Not to Court, or cavern,   
But to the kindly, waiting Witch,  
With her goose and her girl and her merry blue eye;  
Where I might learn in peace what I needed now to know  
But had not grasped from tutor or torment;  
How to live, and heal, and read the future   
In the ashes of the past:  
How to meet my father's eye, in time,  
Without the burn of shame:  
How to love again the fit and feel   
Of name and skin, scarred both alike.  
And if he saw in me, betimes,   
The ghost of his lost little girl and grieved,   
Well.

Perhaps I could someday learn  
To forgive her haunting golden shade.

**Author's Note:**

> This work was originally published in my anthology, **A Thing of Rags and Patches.** It's still available on Amazon, but I don't want readers to have to pay Jefe Bezos for the privilege of reading it, when the whole reason I published the work was to get it off my hard drive and out into the world.
> 
> So I'm republishing it here. If you like it, please let me know -- leave me a comment, share your thoughts, and so on. I wouldn't say no to a rec or two, either, if anybody's so motivated.


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